Plastic pallet recycling in Laredo: ZIPs, industries and the loads they leave behind

Laredo in the numbers

Laredo had 2,014 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 0.11% of the national total and 54th of the 60 metros we cover.

It spans 1 county: Webb. Being a one-county metro, its county and its metro counts are the same figure. Warehousing is 2.4% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 1.1% of Texas's 175,579 warehousing jobs. 3 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 78045 (Laredo, 72).

The industries behind the loads

One industry is named for the Laredo metro. The most concentrated is warehousing and storage, at 1.7 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage2,014 jobs in 2025, 0.11% of the US total. Forklift tines split decks and chip corners. A racking change retires one style at once. Strays arrive on inbound trailers from shippers who use pooled pallets, and sit in the yard until someone asks whose they are. Check the strays first. Then separate the rackables, which are usually PP, from the nestables, which are usually HDPE. Describe each stack as its own line. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.

On the freight lanes: I-35

Laredo sits on I-35, which runs from Laredo, Texas, at the Mexican border to Duluth, Minnesota, splitting into I-35E and I-35W at Dallas-Fort Worth and again at the Twin Cities. The metros we track on it hold 147,019 private warehousing jobs, 7.7% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Dallas (82,593), San Antonio (16,751), Austin (5,657), Kansas City (20,676), Minneapolis (6,599), Oklahoma City (8,336) and Des Moines (4,393).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are New Orleans (2,090), Hagerstown (1,842) and Knoxville (1,751).

Elsewhere in Texas

Dallas (82,593 jobs, 41.01 times Laredo, busiest ZIP 75050), Houston (33,785 jobs, 16.78 times Laredo, busiest ZIP 77571), San Antonio (16,751 jobs, 8.32 times Laredo, busiest ZIP 78218) and Austin (5,657 jobs, 2.81 times Laredo, busiest ZIP 78744) are the other metros we cover in Texas, which has 175,579 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

A smaller market, with fewer sites within reach of each other. For a pile in Laredo, say whether it can be held and for how long, and whether the pallets are stacked where a truck can reach them.

What a Laredo load looks like

The biggest named industry is warehousing and storage, with 2,014 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marked pallets get the ownership check first.